Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Hey everyone, just wanted to share that we had a great day on the water today with finback whales on both of our trips!!

On our 10:00 am departure we sent our Scout boat out to help search some offshore areas and was so happy to hear that they found 2 large fin whales on a shallow area called the Wolves Bank!! We got some great looks before the wind started to pick up out of the southwest.

On our afternoon trip we spent time with 3 minke whales just inside Head Harbour Passage and we were starting our run up the shoreline of Campobello towards Nancy Head to see what we could find when we got a call from a fellow whale watcher out of St. Andrews, Fundy Tide Runners, that they found a fin whale off Blacks Harbour so made our way over and got some great looks in the choppy conditions.

The pictures below are both from the morning trip (notice the calm seas).

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Hello everyone, what a great trip we had today. We had our first fin whale sighting of the 2010 season, and we only officially started whale watching on Saturday!

Below are 2 pictures I took today of the finback we found off Blacks Harbour. It was a calm day and John decided to run us off towards Blacks Harbour to have a look and catch the end of the flood tide and are we ever happy that he did. On the second picture you can see the single rostral rigde that fin whales have as "he" approached the boat....and then went right underneath and out on the other side!

After we spent a while with the finback we headed over to Whitehorse Island to check out some bird colonies.

Here are some nesting black-legged kittiwakes

This is a young double-crested cormourant drying it's feather, these birds lack oil in their feathers and in order to dry them off they spread them wind in the breeze.

John decided to take a swing by East Quoddy and we found 2 minke whales and one was "Slice"

Thanks so much for checking in today...they are calling for great weather tomorrow and we have 2 trips scheduled. Check back soon

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Hello everyone, we officially begab our 2010 whale watching season today with 2 great trips on the Bay. On both trips we spent time with minke whales (3 on our 10:00 am departure and 4 on our 2:00 pm), seals, harbour porpoise, bald eagles and we saw some diving gannets on our afternoon trip as well.

My boyfriend Rob was a passenger on the boat today and he took over my camera so I wanted to share a bunch of his pictures from today with you all,

First, here are 4 different minke whales that we saw today, you can see that their dorsal fins are unique and in the case of the last one, has no dorsal. This whale was injured at some point, there is some very light scarring but is just fine now without a dorsal fin.....we are affectionately referring this this minke as Slice.

Here I am showing a sample of minke whale baleen to some passengers...well, Rob had me pose and take a photo after I explained the baleen.

We also had a great sighting of a small shark, there are lots of sharks in the Bay but we don't often see them at the surface.

We spotted this mature bald eagle on Spruce Island, there was another mature and a young eagle there as well.

We stopped off Fish Island to have a look at an aquaculture site. Here is a worker feeding the young salmon.

And finally I wanted to share a series of pictures with you, these are harbour seals, we stopped at Casco Bay Island on the afternoon ebbing tide to visit with both harbour and grey seals. Seals will haul out on reefs at low tide to rest and here you can see a harbour seal going back into the water....and as we often see they may not be very graceful.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Hey everyone, just wanted to do a quick post and let you all know that I am back in St. Andrews now and we have our first official whale watch on this Saturday, June 26th (for info on prices and times just give the office a call at 1-877-688-2600).

Also, round 2 of the 2010 Gulf of Maine Humpback Naming has come to an end and I got to name 8 more whales (these are whales that were sighted in the Gulf of Maine but none of them by Quoddy Link Marine, our unknowns will have great names by July 1st and I will be sure to keep you all posted).

2015 Humpback Sightings

2015 North Atlantic Right Whale Sightings

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I have been working for Quoddy Link Marine since 2002. I graduated from the University of Guelph with an honors BSc. in Marine Biology. I'm in charge of photographing, identifying and recording the whales that we see and sharing that information with Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, MA and the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station on Grand Manan, NB. It's a privledge to have the opportunity to spend the amount of time I do on the water with the whales, they are absolutly amazing creatures.

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All photographs on this blog have been taken by me, Danielle Dion, unless otherwise stated. You have permission to copy, save and/or print any images for you own personal use only. It would be greatly appreciated if credit is given on your personal blogs or Facebook pages. If you want to use any images for commercial uses, such as a business website, please contact me prior to use at danielle.m.dion@hotmail.com